Marta Verginella

Marta Verginella
Marta Verginella (right) together with Boris Pahor and historian Milica Kacin Wohinz in Trieste.
Born	1960 Trieste
Fields	modern history

Marta Verginella (born 20 June 1960) is an Italian historian from the Slovene minority in Italy in Trieste, notable as one of the most prominent contemporary Slovene historians. Together with Alenka Puhar, she is considered a pioneer in the history of family relations in the Slovene Lands.

Life

She was born in Trieste, Italy. She attended Slovene language schools in Trieste. In 1984, she graduated from history at the University of Trieste under the supervision of the renowned social anthropologist and feminist historian Luisa Accati. For five years she worked as a high school teacher in the schools with Slovene as language of instruction, both in Trieste and Gorizia. In 1995, she obtained her PhD at the University of Ljubljana under the supervision of Peter Vodopivec, with a thesis on the changing attitudes towards death in the 19th century rural peripheries of Trieste.

Work

She has been visiting professor at several universities in Italy, as well as at the University of Valencia in Spain, and the University of Primorska in Koper, Slovenia. Since 1996, she has taught theory of historiography and social history of 19th century Europe at the University of Ljubljana.

She has written on a variety of topics, including social and demographic history, history of historiography, cultural history of 19th and 20th century, women studies, and the history of the Slovene minority in Italy (1920-1947). She rose to prominence with her studies on the relationship between the urban and rural societies in Habsburg Istria.

Particularly outstanding are also her microhistory studies on the daily life during World War II. In the last decade, she has also written extensively on history of intellectuals in the border area between Slovenia and Italy. He essay about the issue, entitled The Border of the Others ("Il confine degli altri") became a best-seller in Italy in 2008.

Selected works

In Italian

• 1990 Città e campagna nel tramonto asburgico ("City and Countriside in the Late Habsburg Empire"). Turin.
• 1995 L'altra resistenza: la guerra di liberazione a Trieste e nella Venezia Giulia ("The Other Resistance: the Liberation Fight in Trieste and the Julian March"), co-authored with Jože Pirjevec and Roberto Spazzali. Trieste.
• 1999 Fra invenzione della tradizione e ri-scrittura del passato: las storiografia slovena degli anni Novanta ("Between Invention of Tradition and the Re-Writing of the Past: Slovenian Historiography in the 1990s"), editor. Trieste.
• 2001 Sloveni a Trieste tra Sette e Ottocento: da comunità etnica a minoranza nazionale ("The Slovenes in Trieste between the 18th and 19th Century: from Ethnic Community to National Minority"). Trieste.
• 2008 Il confine degli altri: la questione giuliana e la memoria slovena ("The Border of the Others. The Julian March Question and the Slovene Remembrance"). Rome.

In Slovene

• 1990 Družina v Dolini pri Trstu v 19. stoletju ("Family Life in the Village of Dolina near Trieste in the 19th Century"). Ljubljana.
• 1996 Ekonomija odrešenja in preživetja : odnos do življenja in smrti na tržaškem podeželju ("The Economy of Redemption and Survival: the Attitude towards Life and Death in the Trieste Countryside"). Koper.
• 2004 Suha pašta, pesek in bombe: vojni dnevnik Bruna Trampuža ("Dried Pasta, Sand and Bombs: War Journal of Bruno Trampuž"). Koper.
• 2006 Ženska obrobja: vpis žensk v zgodovino Slovencev ("Women's Peripheries: the Inscription of Women in the Slovene History"). Ljubljana.
• 2008 Primorski upor fašizmu: 1920-1941 ("The Anti-Fascist Resistance in the Slovenian Littoral, 1920-1941"), co-authored with Milica Kacin Wohinz. Ljubljana.

See also

• Boris M. Gombač

Sources

• Short biography with photo
• Biography